I haven't read the book The Apostolic Congregation by George G. Hunter III. Happily, I have a friend who did. Here are some good quotes from it. If you want to see other good quotes from the book, go to Dan's Bookshelf. “Today, worldwide, wherever most of the ministry that matters is assigned to the clergy, …
Continue reading Quotes from George C. Hunter III on Evangelism and Church Growth
I love a good quote. This is good because it makes one think. "When someone is honestly 55% right, that's very good and there's no use wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it's wonderful, it's great luck, and let him thank God. But what's to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this …
Today, we had our third practice for our seminary choir. We are performing tomorrow. There is somewhere around 18 of us. We represent people from the Philippines, United States, Thailand, India, and Myanmar (I think that is all). It is hard to imagine a song that could be selected that would be culturally relevant to …
<Continuation from Part 2> Missionary Interaction with a Culture Missionary Culture Respondent Culture Figure V. Gospel Communication Between Cultures Figure V shows the most generic interaction where a missionary from one culture seeks to give a contextualized message to a second culture. If one looks at the Three Culture Model, this …
Continue reading Some Thoughts on Culture, Communication, and Missions. Part 3
<Continuation from Part 1> The Cultural Game Another popular form for looking at culture is in the form of game or play. Some people who promote this model are Johan Huizinga and Wolfhart Pannenberg. The following is not following their ideas. I am just pointing out that the analogy of culture and play is not …
Continue reading Some Thoughts on Culture, Communication, and Missions. Part 2
I have been dabbling with communication models (such as the 3-culture model). I thought the basic appearance could be applied to cultures and interaction of cultures. I am very open to thoughts on this. Figure 1 shows two people groups. P People Group N Natural World (objective reality) associated with the people group C Culture …
Continue reading Some Thoughts on Culture, Communication, and Missions. Part 1
<Note: I take a more Baptist understanding of Christian baptism (although I am certainly more open-minded than some). Thus I understand baptism as primarily symbolic rather than sacramental or salvific. However, I think most all Christians would agree that there is a strong symbolic aspect to baptism. As such, hopefully there are thoughts here worthy …
Continue reading Missiological Implications of the Symbolic Understanding of Baptism
In evangelism there is a tendency to see response in the simplest of terms. Full acceptance is GOOD. Anything less is BAD. But there are a wide range of responses, Here are six major options (not necessarily a complete list). I got these from Dr. Dan Russell, my professor in seminary. Not sure of any …
Continue reading Reflection on Different Responses to Evangelism
My wife and I were invited to attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the Crawley Bethesda Mission Center. It will be on the grounds of Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary. The plan is for the upper story to be focused on training for cross-cultural missions, while the lower floor involved more in holistic and regional missions (things …
Some notes from Stephen Neill's book, "A History of Christian Missions," regarding early missions: A. Neill speaks of three things that occurred in the first century that radically affected the expansion of the church. 1. The first was the realization the Jesus was not going to return quickly. After a fairly frenzied attempt to evangelize …
Continue reading Quotes and Notes on Early Christian Missions